PREFACE
accuracy at present and of its unavoidable sketchiness and artistry. There are groups of those who criticise "God the Invisible King"—the most striking cases are the critics from the Rationalist Press Association and from the Roman Catholic Church—who are manifestly saturated by the absolutely opposite idea, the conviction that the terms of human thought are solid, opaque and stable. They will allow no license to poetry unless it scans, rhymes, is printed in lines and otherwise marked clearly as such. Otherwise they insist upon a literal and material consistency. When they encounter such a phrase as "God walked in the garden" they insist that it follows that he cast a shadow, crushed stray caterpillars in the turf and kicked aside the gravel. The former group demand therefore footprints and the size of His boots for purposes of verification, being equally prepared to deny the Presence altogether or prove a Cockney trespasser; the second, following the same line of thought in an opposite direction, are ready to welcome any stray scraps of boot-heel, any cast shoe protectors or the like as evidence to silence the sceptic. Either side is equally angry when it is told that the statement was not intended to that extent. There is virtuous indignation.
Or again if one writes, "God responds," they demand "by a voice?" or "was it by planchette?" or how the trick was done. Mr. William Archer became almost facetious in his "God and Mr. Wells" because God who can come into men's hearts as a still small voice does not come in with a few recipes of practical value. Many people have evidently never realised
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